Quick question for you guys, how much power would I be needing with my desktop as it appears in my info plus another 460? I've been looking around and getting mixed answers some say sli460s with a core 2 quad will need 600 some say more like 700.

The problem is that my psu now is only 600 so I'm guessing if I want to run sli I'm going to have to upgrade that. Another thing to consider is that my video card and processor are both overclocked.

I wouldn't risk it, when I ran SLI GTX460s with my X3370 Xeon(which uses less power than your Q6600) the setup popped a Thermaltake Toughpower 750w with better specs than your 600w. Those Fermi cards just suck down the juice. I wouldn't consider SLI on your setup with anything less than a decent 850w unit, or a really good 750w(like an HX750).

I wouldn't risk it, when I ran SLI GTX460s with my X3370 Xeon(which uses less power than your Q6600) the setup popped a Thermaltake Toughpower 750w with better specs than your 600w. Those Fermi cards just suck down the juice. I wouldn't consider SLI on your setup with anything less than a decent 850w unit, or a really good 750w(like an HX750).

Click to expand...

That might not have been because the PSU was underpowered, it could just have been defective. The 460 pulls about 160W in Furmark, so a 750W unit would be just fine (if it's a decent unit).

I do have to say though that for an 600W power supply, the cabling was a bit of a concern. On average I found cabling too short and especially for graphics cards to have only one 6-pin and one 6/8-pin PEG power connector ... that's just shy. To be able to connect our cards we had to use all kinds of converter cables. And especially with cards like a GeForce GTX 460, which you could setup in SLI with a PSU like shown today, we really feel the need for more PCIe GFX PEG headers.

Remember the quality of the unit is almost more important than the wattage. My Corsair TX850 powered a i7 970 oced to 4,2ghz, and five different gpus (a gtx 275 co-op, a 9800gx2 and a gtx 260) also oced for over a year 24/7 before giving up in sparks and smoke. Some 1000w psu would have not last this long.

So choose yourself a 750w of good quality, the psu will run at its best at around 50% load. Less heat, less noise and a better and longer life.

Running dual 460s with an overclocked AMD FX on a 750w here. No issues so far. Haven't seen the telltale GPU throttling when it is in need of power. I do have a 5.25in 250W GPU PSU I can drop in if needed.

As always, buy quality when you buy PSUs. I bought a lot of crap before I got my first Antec. Never went back since. Suckers are solid and last well. All my Antecs are still in use. My old, think it was a 530w, is still going strong in a friend's PC.